IBM 4758 Teardown

One of my coworkers found a dead IBM 4758, so we decided what better a thing to do with it than...See more

One of my coworkers found a dead IBM 4758, so we decided what better a
thing to do with it than take it apart to see what made it tick. In
particular, we were interested in the physical defense countermeasures,
many of which are easily visible in these photos.

This particular card, an IBM 4758-002, a FIPS 140 Level 4 physical card.
This card had severe physical tamper detection countermeasures. People
would use such devices to act as the root of trust for a certificate
signing authority (to keep the key material safe) or to store secrets for
secure communication for, for example, banking.

No working IBM 4758 boards were harmed in this process. This card had its
batteries die out a long time ago, so it was essentially (and almost
literally) a brick.